RAD Tech Weekly Recap — Robotics, Aerospace, and Defense at Full Throttle

The Mission Brief

Hey RAD Readers,

This week’s been all systems go: Amazon dropped a robot with a sense of touch, Boom Supersonic is revving up in Colorado, and Armenia unveiled drone munitions that are small but savage.

Let’s run down the wildest hard tech headlines you may have missed.

Robotics Roundup: Vulcan, Ping-Pong Bots & Warehouse Wars

Amazon’s Vulcan Robot Gets a Feel for the Job 🔎
Meet Vulcan, Amazon’s newest warehouse robot. Debuted in Germany, this bot uses tactile sensors to identify and stow 75% of items—a serious leap past suction-cup bots. Human oversight remains, but Vulcan does the heavy lifting.

Standard Bots Doubles NY Output, Unleashes 30kg Cobot 🌟
With a shiny 16,000 sq ft facility in Glen Cove, Standard Bots is beefing up its U.S. manufacturing—and dropping a new cobot that can handle serious payloads.

MIT’s Ping-Pong Bot Has Game 🏓
An agile robotic arm + high-speed vision + predictive control = 88% return rate. Researchers say this tech could translate to agile search-and-rescue humanoids.

Box Shaking for Science 📦
MIT (with Amazon Robotics) also built a bot that can identify a box’s contents just by shaking it. No cameras. Just proprioception.

Serve Robotics Deploys 250 Sidewalk Bots 🍽️
Serve rolled out 250 third-gen bots in Q1, making strides in uptime and autonomy. From burritos to packages, streets are getting smarter.

Mouser Electronics Teases DIY Automation Kits ✨
Ahead of Automate 2025, Mouser is dropping sensors, motor drivers, and edge-AI boards for integrators itching to build proof-of-concept bots.

Aerospace: Starship, Supersonics & Lunar Dreams

Starship Gets FAA Greenlight ✈️
SpaceX can now launch 25 Starships per year from Texas. Clean beaches and chill turtles required. Big boost for rapid-reuse testing.

Artemis II Eyes Feb 2026 Launch 🐘
NASA may move up its first crewed SLS-Orion flight by 2 months. Expect a lunar fly-by (moonwalks still TBD).

IAG Buys 71 Wide-Bodies 🛂
British Airways' parent company bought 32 Boeing 787-10s and 21 Airbus A330-900neos, betting big on long-haul travel.

Vertical Aerospace Taps Honeywell ✈️
The VX4 air taxi gets fly-by-wire tech in a deal worth up to $1B. Certification by 2028 is the goal.

Rocket Lab Revenue Pops + USAF Contract 🌌
Q1 revenue hit $122.6M, up 32% YoY. Oh, and Neutron just scored a USAF gig for space cargo re-entry testing.

Boom Supersonic Picks Colorado for Engine Testing 🌟
Boom is bringing Symphony trials home with a $5M facility near Denver. Full-throttle tests are expected later this year.

Defense Tech: Hypersonics, GPS-Free Nav & Tactical AI

Stratolaunch Talon-A Goes 2-for-2 🚀
The Pentagon’s reusable hypersonic testbed nailed all benchmarks and is ready for round three. Welcome to the new wind tunnel.

Northrop’s GPS-Free Nav Breaks Mach 5+ 🌌
A rugged inertial measurement unit (IMU) survived hypersonic flight without GPS. Big win for anti-jamming navigation tech.

MQ-9B Protector Gets UK Airworthiness Cert 🇬🇧
The UK’s first NATO-grade UAV is cleared to fly over civilian areas. ISR and maritime patrol just got upgraded.

Glide-Phase Interceptor Delayed to 2035 ⏰
Budget issues pushed the hypersonic killer missile’s IOC to 2035. U.S. still has no defense against maneuvering hypersonics.

Anduril + Palantir = Tactical Edge Compute 📈
Palantir’s Gaia + Anduril’s Menace kit = real-time battlefield insights in a plug-and-play rugged box.

Armenia’s GBL Bomb Turns Quadcopters Deadly 💣
The 4kg smart bomb can equip off-the-shelf drones with precision strikes. Bad news for tanks without active defenses.

Meme of the Day: